Cronus
A familiar sight to many in the world - Cronus. This planet has dazzled poets, dreamers, and astronauts alike for many centuries. Cronus is of similar composition, mass, and diameter to Saturn, and seems to share the same beautiful ring system that Terrans experience on a daily basis. However, there is a difference noted. There are numerous gaps in Cronus' ring system, measuring thousands of kilometers in distance. The reason for this are large shepherd moons that exist within the system itself, believed to form from material building up. The B-ring, and the A-ring are where these major divisions exist, and as such, cause the ring to appear more as hoops from Mobius. Despite the missing material, Cronus has always appeared beautiful to observers. Unlike Zeus' ring system, Cronus' rings appear to be ice-based, with some rocky material occasionally spotted. Because of this, the rings reflect light far more than Zeus does, making them far more visible. Planetary Description Cronus is made of hydrogen and helium, though contains more ammonia than its Terran counterpart, which has resulted in a bright white band across the equator that seems to complement the orange-yellow tinge of the greater planet. Unlike Zeus, Cronus does not appear to have notable cloud banding that can be seen from Mobius outside of the equatorial ammonia clouds. However, most unusual in the planet is what is known as a hexagon storm, which is located on both the north and southern poles of the planet, whereas Saturn in the Sol system appears to have a persisting storm only at the northern pole. It seems that these hexagonal storms are linked to Cronus' radio emissions from deep within the structure of the gas giant. From a distance, these odd formations are rather beautiful and do not appear to be out of the ordinary. On the contrary - The Unified Colonial Administration Authority Factbook - a supplementary work to the Codex, mentions that many gas giants that resemble Cronus have hexagonal storms. The planet also seems devoid for the most part, of large storms on the level of the Great Pale Spot, however, there are small vortexes in both the northern and southern hemisphere that are only several hundred kilometers at the widest point. Wind speeds are lower than that on Zeus, perhaps only reaching a thousand kilometers an hour. Moon System The moons however are a point of difference when comparing Cronus to Saturn, especially since many of them do not seem to exist. Saturn is confirmed to have well over 70 moons, however, it appears that Cronus appears to lack many of the smaller objects, and instead seems to have had the matter consolidated into twenty larger objects. This has puzzled UEG scientists greatly and serves as a point of major divergence from the Sol system. From the lack of debris surrounding Cronus, it appears that the moons, if there were smaller moons at all, merged into these larger bodies millions of years prior. Some are recognizable, while others are something unique entirely. Mimas is the innermost moon of note. However, what makes it notable is what it lacks. In the Sol system, Mimas is known for its impressively large impact crater that covers a considerable portion of its geography. However, in this system, it appears that the impact crater is absent, and as a result, the moon seem to retain more mass, measuring in at over two hundred and fifty kilometers. It is also fifty percent more massive than the Sol variation of the moon. Aside from that, it is rather plain with no distinguishing marks. It is airless, though its very small gravity seems to grab particles from the extended G-ring every now and again. Enceladus is the next out from the ring system, however, its size and mass is far greater than expected. It measures over twelve hundred kilometers in diameter and maintains a smooth, icy, and cracked exterior, similar to Europa. Like Europa, there are believed to be oceans under the ice, and telescopes have captured what appear to be icy geysers rising into space measuring several dozen kilometers above the surface. The cracks in the icy crust are caused by tidal forces acted upon it by Cronus, though it appears the forces are not as strong as Europa's. Enceladus is marked as a possible source of water ice on long intrasystem journeys. The next moon of note is Rhea, which under normal circumstances would be unusual, were it not for the ring system that it exhibits. Rhea possesses three thick and icy rings in orbit around the moon. A hypothesis is that somehow Rhea managed to steal ring material from Cronus, but that hypothesis is cast into doubt considering that it is the third body from the ring; far less likely to grab particles. However, given the fact that a sizable portion of Cronus' ring material is missing, some of it may have been found by Rhea's gravitational field. An object the size of this tiny moon is not likely to maintain a spherical shape, yet it does, despite not being particularly dense considering the material it is made out of. The next moon is Titan, which is rather unusual for a moon as it retains a thick atmosphere around it. It is larger than the Broken Moon, and more massive than it, and appears notable for being the only other moon in the Aurora system that retains a form of liquid on its surface. Because of the extreme distances from Mobius, Titan is cold, not even 100 Kelvin, almost -180 Celsius. Water, even salt water, would freeze instantly on the surface of the moon. However, what Titan does possess in abundance is liquid hydrocarbons - carbon chain materials that we would recognize as butane, gasoline, ethane, propane; all of these exist as liquids on the extremely low temperature surface of Titan. The atmosphere is almost fifty percent thicker than Mobius'. If one were to strap wings to their arms, they would be able to fly in the thick atmosphere by flapping. Titan's natural cycles are very similar to those found on Mobius. Storms have been observed to occur on the surface, complete with hydrocarbon rain that seems to form larger spheres that fall to the ground at only a tenth of the gravity of Mobius. Any sign of heat causes sublimation of the local liquids to gas. A popular myth is that if one were to light a match on Titan, the entire atmosphere would be burned at once. This is untrue as there is virtually no oxygen in Titan's atmosphere. Oxygen is crucial for keeping a flame lit; despite the large amounts of nitrogen in the moon's atmosphere as well, which also makes up most of our breathing air. There are signs that Titan may have been settled, or at the very least, visited by the Human civilization of eons past. Probes flying over the moon's surface made observations that what appeared to be structures were located on mountainous plateaus, however, no communication was ever returned, signifying that it was an abandoned or destroyed structure, lost during whatever cataclysm wiped the old civilization from Aurora. Past Titan, there are two moons that do not correspond to the Saturn system. These moons are massive, easily the largest in the system, and they appear to orbit one another, making it the only binary moon in the Aurora system - Dione, and Iapetus. These two moons are rocky, airless, but are nearly the size of Mobius. As such, it is debated whether or not to call them planets instead of moons, though because their center of gravity is still well inside of Cronus, they remain moons. Iapetus is 10,400 kilometers in width, and Dione, the smaller of the two, is 11,120 kilometers in width. They orbit each other at a distance of only thirty thousand kilometers, and are tidally locked to one another to the point where each side will always face the other. For objects this close, it seems unlikely that this would be the case, but Dione and Iapetus have stable orbits, and each appears massive in the other's skies. The remaining moons are small and un-noteworthy. Despite their size, they are only asteroids with very little to set them apart from other rocks. Trivia * Cronus is named after the Greek god of the harvest, as all bodies in the Aurora system have had their Roman names switched for Greek ones. Behind the Scenes * Cronus is by far the best of the gas giants I've done for the system. This planet is also based on a NASA image of a planet. Saturn has solid rings though, so the first thing to do was to add gaps to make the image consistent with the description, and adding the bottom half of the planet was necessary to make it seem more realistic. The moons were not present in the original image, and neither was the shadow nor the aurora. All of these were added to increase the appeal of the image. List of Appearances * None Category:Planet Category:Locations Category:Gas Giant